Section for Biodiversity
The Section studies the fundamental evolutionary and ecological principles and processes that generate and maintain biodiversity on Earth. We study past, present and future patterns in biological diversity, its distribution, the interactions among species and their future fate under global change of climate.
Head of Section: Professor David Nogués Bravo
Our research addresses over-arching questions about the underlying principles of life. We focus on understanding the past, present, and future of biodiversity by integrating approaches from community ecology, macroecology, macroevolution, systematic, phylogeography and biogeography. Using a combination of modelling (statistical & mathematical), experiments, and field-based approaches in hypothesis testing frameworks, we shed light on the processes that are fundamental to understanding the evolution of biological diversity. This approach requires the generation and integration of natural history knowledge, coupled with distribution, genetic data and evolutionary and traditional specimen-based research on thousands of species.
Front-cover article in Science, in which we publish the first-ever generated global map of genetic diversity. The results show that human activity has already transformed reduce genetic diversity within animals: An Anthropocene map of genetic diversity
Using cutting-edge light level geolocators, we followed migratory birds from Denmark to Africa and revealed that individual birds through movement are able to track resources-level within and between continents. This paper quickly became a Highly Cited Paper: Resource tracking within and across continents in long-distance bird migrants
In a 13-pages article in Science, we published the first model biodiversity using first principle to incorporates the processes of speciation, movement, maintenance and extinction through 800,000 years to elucidate the causality of what generate contemporary distribution and diversity of life at a continental scale: Modeling the ecology and evolution of biodiversity: Biogeographical cradles, museums, and graves
See full list of publications by Kasper Thorup
Research
Research within the section is organized in the Center for Macroecology, Evolution and climate (leader Carsten Rahbek). The section includes Center for Global Mountain Biodiversity (leader Carsten Rahbek), and Queen Margrethe's and Vigdís Finnbogadóttir's Interdisciplinary Research Centre on Ocean, Climate, and Society (ROCS) (leader Katherine Richardson). In addition, CMEC hosts Sustainability Science Centre (SSC) (leader Katherine Richardson), and IPBES in Denmark.